


Like Icarus Before Me

by Arokel



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:48:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27316528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arokel/pseuds/Arokel
Summary: If Aziraphale were a Good person, a virtuous person, he wouldn’t have taken Crowley’s hand at all.Aziraphale muses on the nature of Goodness, and finally shares those musings with Crowley.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 56





	Like Icarus Before Me

**Author's Note:**

> This is unbeta'd and probably kind of a structural mess, but I think we all need something gentle and fluffy in our lives right now. There was gonna be a sex scene but my parents read my fic now so... maybe in a separate chapter :P
> 
> Love you all, hope you're holding up and if fanfic brings you comfort, I hope this one helps.

The problem went like this: Aziraphale was not a Good person. He was good person, make no mistake, and he tried to _do_ good things in his everyday life, but when it came down to it, he liked his solitude more than he liked other people, and he tended to put himself above all else. Those were not capital-G-Good qualities. Of course, he had a vague, over-arching sense of Right and Wrong. But Crowley had that too, and Crowley was not a Good person, though perhaps a better one than he liked to say he was.

Aziraphale was good to people because he wanted to be. And sometimes, when he was in a bad mood or simply just tired, he didn’t want to be. And he hadn’t Fallen for it yet.

It was only just past two o’clock when Aziraphale flipped the bookshop sign to ‘closed’, but he was tired, too many people had wanted to buy books from him already, and he had an appointment to keep. An appointment which had materialized in his back room roughly five minutes before, armed with scotch and a wilting philodendron, but an appointment nevertheless. Drinking with Crowley was preferable to dissuading customers from using the bookshop for its stated purpose, at any rate. Closing up early to get day-drunk with a demon was not a Good choice, but, given the way the morning had gone, it was the right one for his nerves.

“And then she had the audacity to claim she’d forgotten she’d put it in her bag! I didn’t report her, of course, but really, she ought to have had the decency to confess,” he told the sign, scowling out the window at the myriad of raincoated pedestrians. Drizzly days like this one were the worst kinds of days; people tracked water all over his hardwood floors and brushed their rain-soaked jackets along the spines of his most delicate, antique books.

“Soft on crime; that’s what I’ve always considered your side to be,” Crowley said drily, correctly assuming Aziraphale had been addressing him as well as the sign. “Thought you weren’t so big on confession anymore, though.”

That was the nice thing about rainy days. As of the last month or so, every day that dawned grey and drizzly would find Crowley on his metaphorical doorstep by midafternoon, bearing alcohol and a paper-thin justification for his presence. It being November, they had seen rather a lot of each other lately.

“Calling the police is always such a hassle,” Aziraphale said. “And it would have gone on her record, and she’s a graduate student…”

Crowley grinned, draped elegantly against Aziraphale’s front counter. “Only the classiest of shoplifters for you, angel.”

“The university gives her access to JSTOR,” Aziraphale grumbled. He knew what Crowley was doing. Weeks of wine and gifts he had ‘just lying around his apartment’ were not up to Crowley’s usual standards of subtlety, and Aziraphale wasn’t convinced he was even _trying_ to be subtle.

“Paywalls,” Crowley said, as if savoring a particularly happy memory, “proud of that one. Roadblocks in the betterment of the mind through knowledge, all that. Didn’t receive the praise I ought to have.”

If Aziraphale were a Good person, he would frown, or scold Crowley, or refuse to accept his scotch and houseplant. But the scotch was his favorite and the houseplant clearly needed more loving than Crowley was giving it, and Aziraphale was not, as previously stated, a Good person. So instead, he smiled in good-humored exasperation and held his hand out to Crowley.

“Shall we retire?”

Crowley groaned, accepting the hand and allowing Aziraphale to pull him out of his slouch. “You can just say ‘let’s go,’ angel. We aren’t going to play billiards while the ladies adjourn to the drawing room.” He kept his hand in Aziraphale’s for just a hesitant moment too long to be strictly proper.

Aziraphale didn’t mention it, but he did let his fingers trail over Crowley’s wrist as he pulled away. “Well, if you’re going to be like that: let’s get drunk, and you can tell me what you said to that poor plant to make it look so frightened.”

Crowley absentmindedly touched his wrist where Aziraphale’s hand had been. Aziraphale thought perhaps he hadn’t meant for Aziraphale to see. “It knows what it did.”

If Aziraphale were a Good person, a virtuous person, he would pretend he hadn’t. If he were truly as Good as his angelic nature dictated, he wouldn’t have taken Crowley’s hand at all. He wouldn’t have stooped to indulging Crowley in his little game, when they both knew it would go nowhere.

Aziraphale _knew_ what Crowley was doing. It was painfully, obviously transparent. And it should have bothered him. Heavenly tolerance only stretched so far, and surely there were limits to how much consorting and carousing with demons one was allowed to do and walk away untainted.

But it had been going on for centuries, and Aziraphale hadn’t Fallen yet.

“I figured maybe you could put the fear of God into it,” Crowley said, when Aziraphale said nothing. He seemed unable to abide the quiet, tapping his feet and drumming his fingers against the countertop as Aziraphale carefully checked that everything was locked up properly.

That was something else to take into consideration, Aziraphale reflected, succumbing to the urge to take Crowley by the hand once more and lead him back towards his favorite reading nook in the back, beside the bay windows. Crowley, taken off guard, juggled the plant and the scotch for a moment before abandoning the plant on a soon-to-be=forgotten shelf and simply letting his hand be held.

It was an important consideration, Aziraphale thought, to distract himself from the knowledge that he was holding Crowley’s hand with no plausible excuse if Crowley asked for one, because it could have very interesting repercussions for the two of them.

Crowley said ‘God’ now.

The first time it had slipped out, post-Adam, he had looked petrified, as if the Almighty, reminded of their existence by recent events, might strike him down on the spot. But nothing had happened.

Now it sat as easily in Crowley’s mouth as if it had always belonged there, and Crowley used it as indiscriminately as a human, without so much as a glance skyward.

Aziraphale, neither as bold nor as reckless as Crowley, had not tried it in the reverse, but he had, once, exclaimed ‘what the hell?’ when Crowley materialized behind him with a bouquet of daffodils. And again, nothing had happened.

The chairs in this particular corner of the shop were only the third-most comfortable in Aziraphale’s home, but Crowley liked to watch the rain on the windows, and Aziraphale liked to make Crowley happy, so he accepted the sacrifice. Occasionally, if they stayed too long into the night, Crowley would fall asleep in his chair, and Aziraphale would soften the cushions behind his head for a few hours until he woke and apologized for drifting off. Aziraphale had once admitted he liked watching Crowley at peace, and Crowley had blushed so profusely and left so abruptly that Aziraphale had never dared to mention it again.

Aziraphale had not been a Good person in many years. He performed miracles selfishly, for his own comfort and that of his friend’s. He was rude to strangers who only wanted to buy books from him, simply because they disturbed his peace. He held hands with a demon, and he wanted to do more that.

Crowley looked very reluctant to let go when they took their customary seats, but let go he did, with a quick squeeze. Aziraphale thought one or both of them might have blushed.

The problem, given that Aziraphale was not a Good person, was that Crowley seemingly thought he was. And in that thinking, out of a generosity of spirit he would deny if accused of it, he was holding back. He would hold Aziraphale’s hand, if Aziraphale held his first, and he would bring chocolates and flowers and wine, but he would take no further action. It was admirably noble, and exasperatingly so.

Wanting a demon in the way Aziraphale did was not Good. But Aziraphale _wasn’t_ Good. That much was clear. And it hadn’t as yet, come back to bite him.

Crowley, however, did not know that, and he shied away from the subject whenever Aziraphale approached it, as if he feared merely speaking of it could be dangerous. It was touching.

And very tiring.

“No wine?” Aziraphale asked. It was asinine, meaningless, but he could think of nothing to follow that reluctant releasing. Banalities were the safest choice.

“I thought we might like a change,” Crowley said. He was definitely pink.

Aziraphale sat in these particular seats because Crowley liked them, and it was easy to be kind to Crowley – easier than it was to be kind to humans, most of the time. But he had to admit that the rain on the window was a soothing murmur against the hush of the bookshop, the companionable but uncertain silence of their secluded corner. It suited Aziraphale’s thoughts.

“You do know me so well, dear,” he said, absently, watching Crowley’s cheeks turn a shade darker. He manifested two mostly dust-free whiskey glasses with a thought. “Let’s try it, then.”

Crowley instead drank straight from the bottle and passed it to Aziraphale – hideously uncouth and almost an affront to the quality of the drink itself, but Aziraphale followed suit. Crowley watched him with something like longing.

“Do you know why you Fell?” Aziraphale asked. Crowley choked on his next sip.

“Excuse me?”

Aziraphale kicked himself. It was insensitive at best, and tipping his hand, at worst. “I’m sorry. You don’t have to say, if it’s painful –“

Crowley wiped his chin with the back of his hand and set the bottle on the table between them, cautious and guarded. As anyone would be, under such a line of questioning. “No, it’s – I don’t remember. Doubt, I think it was. Asking too many questions.” He frowned, gaze sharpening in concern. “Are you worried?”

“Not at all.”

Aziraphale watched as Crowley seemed to deflate.

“That’s… good, angel. You had me worried.”

If the wistful, conflicted look Crowley had been leveling at him when he thought Aziraphale’s attention was occupied meant what Aziraphale thought it did, Crowley had been worried for a very long time.

He shouldn’t be.

As far as Aziraphale understood it, from Crowley’s vaguely recollected account and the periodic, pointed reminders he received in the form of colorful mailings which refused to be recycled, the difference between Falling and not was faith. That was it.

Aziraphale was not in the highest percentile, as angels went, when it came to faith in the Divine Plan. He had his own opinions, and he kept them to himself most of the time, but if asked he wouldn’t lie about them. He had stopped the apocalypse on the strength of his own conviction.

And he hadn’t Fallen.

So Aziraphale had a more-than-usual degree of faith that Crowley’s fears were unfounded. If Aziraphale _believed_ he wouldn’t Fall, he wouldn’t. It was very convenient loophole.

If Aziraphale were a better person, he would have said all that to Crowley.

“I’ve thought about it,” he said.

Crowley blinked. “Pardon?”

“Of course, it would be silly if I hadn’t, given everything that’s happened, but being around you, it was bound to be on my mind anyway.”

Crowley looked as if he couldn’t decide whether to be disappointed or cautiously optimistic. “Happy to be a sobering reminder, I suppose.”

The truth was that Aziraphale thought about it quite often, and almost exclusively because of Crowley. Because he wasn’t _positive,_ not with the kind of unwavering certainty one would like to have about these things, that he wouldn’t Fall. He was as certain as he could be, working off his six-thousand-odd years of experience Not Falling, but Heaven worked in mysterious ways, and there was no telling whether one day he’d ask a question too many or dismiss a customer too rudely or get too drunk with a fallen angel, and there you have it, there would be two of them there, two former angels who hadn’t turned their backs on Heaven so much as glanced to the side for a moment too long and been hit while they weren’t looking. It was a distinct and, as Crowley put it, sobering possibility.

So Aziraphale had made his peace with it, over the years. He was prepared. It was easier, too, when he was with Crowley, not to be frightened of it. He couldn’t imagine that Crowley had been _so_ different, as an angel. Perhaps he had never been truly Good, but then, neither had Aziraphale. With all likelihood, Falling would change very little.

Being with Crowley made being brave much easier.

“On the contrary, my dear; you’re a comfort.”

Crowley’s mouth quirked in an uncertain smile. “Can’t say I hear that on the regular.”

Aziraphale had, as was his wont, done the math. Chances were he wouldn’t Fall. After all, it hadn’t happened yet, and he’d done things much worse than flirt with a demon. Defied God, for one. But if he _were_ to Fall, if he were to become like Crowley – he could handle that, if he had Crowley there to guide him through it. And if there was one person in the world Aziraphale was willing to Fall _for_ – had already fallen for, to indulge in a trite maxim – it was Crowley.

“Then that is my oversight. You are a great comfort to me, Crowley. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

Crowley blinked, pleased, and then visibly pulled himself together. “Drink less, I imagine.”

“Considerably less. Indulgences of the physical sort are much more fun with you,” Aziraphale agreed. Crowley looked like he might choke again, but he swallowed with an effort and stared at Aziraphale with wide, longing eyes. Aziraphale mused that he didn’t need to do any angelic deeds at all; Crowley was Thwarting his own desires enough for the both of them.

Perhaps Aziraphale should try Tempting.

“I could sit in my favorite chair,” he thought aloud, and clarified, when Crowley made a questioning sound, “the one to the right of the counter, by the bibles.”

He liked to sit by the bibles because they were soothing, in the same way Crowley was soothed by rain on windowpanes. They were proof that things could be not-quite-perfect and still be holy – could be, in fact, a bit of a heretical mess, and yet still carry a trace of the Divine. They reminded Aziraphale quite a bit of himself.

“That’s your favorite chair? Then why are we sitting here?” Crowley shifted like he meant to stand and relocate right then and there, which was really very sweet. But sitting in a marginally less comfortable chair for Crowley’s sake was one of the more selfless things Aziraphale did nowadays, and he figured it best to stock up on Good deeds, just in case he needed to cancel out a Borderline one.

“There are no windows nearby.”

“And?”

“You like to watch the rain.”

Crowley settled back into his seat with poorly-hidden bafflement. “Oh, I see. Selfless. Very angelic of you.”

“Well, I must at least make an effort to counteract all the selfish things you make me want to do,” Aziraphale said. He had meant it to sound flirtatious, teasing, but it got turned around somewhere along the way and Crowley reeled back in horror.

“You know I don’t mean to –“

“My desires are my own,” Aziraphale said, opting not to salvage but instead to keep moving forward. “They just happen to center on you.”

Crowley blinked, blindsided once again. “Oh yeah?” he said, slowly. “You want to tell me about them?”

It ought to have sounded tawdry, like the pickup lines in the trashy magazines Aziraphale knew Crowley left scattered around the bookshop for his own amusement. But Crowley’s’ fingers were clenched tight around the neck of the bottle and his voice was soft and hesitant as he gazed at Aziraphale like his whole being hung on the reply.

“You know,” Aziraphale said airily, “decadent desserts, expensive scotch, short naps, even. Pleasures of the flesh.”

Crowley swallowed. “Surely you eat when I’m not around,” he said, taking refuge in the one part of Aziraphale’s sentence he felt confident addressing.

“And I sleep sometimes too, but I’d much rather do it with you.”

Crowley looked like he was in physical pain. Perhaps putting him at ease would be a Good action, after all. “Angel, are you trying to – you _must_ know what the words you’re saying mean.”

“That I would like to sleep with you? I’m afraid angels are _far_ too literal to traffic in euphemisms; perhaps you could enlighten me.”

“ _Angel,_ ” Crowley said, strangled. “You can’t – this isn’t right. I’m supposed to be the one Tempting you.”

“Then Tempt,” Aziraphale said. In for a penny, in for a pound. Might as well get all the Damnable actions out of the way at once.

“I’m not going to _Tempt_ you, Angel, don’t be ridiculous,” Crowley said, with a bewildered headshake.

“Of course you’re not,” Aziraphale agreed. “You can’t Tempt me into something I already want to do.”

“Right,” Crowley said, sounding very small and very lost.

“All you have to do is ask.”

Crowley laughed, a wild, defeated sort of sound. “Angel, I would _beg._ ”

Crowley’s hand had dropped to rest against his knee, bottled held precariously in a grip gone slack in uncertainty. Aziraphale took it from Crowley’s unresisting hand and replaced it with his own, turning Crowley’s palm-up so he could feel that Aziraphale’s hand, too, was clammy. Perhaps playing with Crowley wasn’t kind. But _kind_ had never been part of Aziraphale’s job description. That was a character choice he had made on his own.

“I doubt you’d have to go that far,” he said, as steadily as he could manage when his heartbeat was approaching what he feared might be cardiac arrest. “I don’t think I’d take much persuading. But I do think I might like hearing it,” he added, just to feel Crowley’s hand twitch beneath his own.

“This is…” Crowley said, floundering for words.

Aziraphale frowned, suddenly unsure of himself. “This _is_ what you want? I haven’t misread?”

Crowley’s laugh was ragged and disbelieving as, with a rueful shake of the head, he gave in and curled his finger’s around Aziraphale’s, stroking lightly as if he wasn’t sure he should. “Of course it’s what I want. It’s what I’ve wanted for – but it doesn’t matter.”

“Doesn’t it?”

“ _Angel._ ”

“What’s holding you back?” Aziraphale asked, a note of pleading he hadn’t wanted Crowley to hear bleeding through the gentleness of the question.

He watched Crowley scrape together a joke, a distancing tactic, buying himself time to think of a better argument. “Leviticus?”

“Are we men, Crowley?”

“Well, not strictly, but –“

“Crowley.”

Crowley stilled, helpless, caught by Aziraphale’s eyes on his face and Aziraphale’s hand in his hand.

“Would a kiss be so dangerous?”

“A kiss damned Judas Iscariot.”

Aziraphale laughed, warm and gently chiding. “ _You_ damned Judas Iscariot.”

“And I could damn you.”

Aziraphale drew his hand from Crowley’s, knowing his disappointment showed on his face and powerless to hide it. “I won’t do this if you don’t want it, Crowley.”

With an anguished look, Crowley turned away to pick up the bottle and refilled his glass, shoulders sagged in defeat.

Aziraphale watched the rain. _That_ was virtuous, he supposed, that there was one creature for whom Aziraphale would do anything, one person more important than his own wants and desires. How fitting, that it took a demon to bring out the good in him.

“How long have you thought about it?” Crowley said into the guilty silence, addressing the far wall more than Aziraphale.

“I can’t remember,” Aziraphale said, because Crowley was seeking honesty. “I think it began without my notice.”

Crowley was silent again. Then he asked, hesitant as Aziraphale had ever heard him, “how sure are you?” The glass trembled in his fingers.

Aziraphale took it from him, imbuing an almost-truth with the certainty Crowley needed to hear. “Very.”

Crowley took a deep breath, and, with shaking fingers, took Aziraphale’s hand in his own once more. “If you Fell, I don’t know what I’d – “ he whispered, the desperate, pleading look in his eyes at war with his thumb sweeping gentle passes over Aziraphale’s wrist.

“So I won’t.”

Crowley laughed, soft and resigned. “Stubbornness isn’t a virtue.” But he gripped Aziraphale’s hand like a lifeline and slowly, trepidatiously pressed their lips together.

And nothing happened.

Aziraphale breathed a sigh of relief against Crowley’s lips. He hadn’t _thought_ he would Fall, but it was reassuring to know that a kiss, at least, was pure enough. It meant he had been right on at least one count.

Crowley faltered and began to pull away, but then he found some sort of resolve and kissed him again. His eyes were squeezed tight in fear, but his mouth was gentle, almost reverent, against Aziraphale’s.

Aziraphale drew back, just an inch, to speak, and Crowley frowned, eyes still shut. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

Crowley’s frown smoothed out, and he laughed, a perfunctory exhale that belied his unassuaged anxiety. “Don’t fish for compliments.”

“Let’s see if we can do it better, then.”

Crowley opened his eyes, slowly, a faint smile finally crossing his features. “You’re not as subtle as you think you are.”

Aziraphale nosed at Crowley’s cheek, brushing the softest of kisses to his skin. “Oh, was I trying to be subtle? My apologies.”

“ _Please_ ,” Crowley said, exasperated, and Aziraphale remembered him saying he would beg.

“I’ll be straightforward, then,” he said, pressing kisses to the corners of Crowley’s lips before lifting Crowley’s hand to his mouth, kissing each knuckle in turn, open-mouthed and wet, and watched the fearful pallor of Crowley’s face turn pink with anticipation. “Will you let me do this?”

“ _Yes,_ ” Crowley breathed.

Aziraphale had known Crowley’s hesitancy could not last forever. He was too acquainted with Lust to be content with slow and timid for long. Aziraphale was alright with that.

He found himself pulled into Crowley’s lap before he could fully process leaving his chair. _Now_ they were getting somewhere.

But after several blissful moments of kissing – such a human activity; surely unregulated since no angel who had no spent as much time around them as Aziraphale had would even consider it – Crowley retreated.

“I won’t go farther than this.”

It took a frankly angelic effort to shove down his frustration and gentle his voice, but Aziraphale was still an angel, at the end of the day, and even if ensuring one’s partner’s consent wasn’t a Good thing, it was still a _good_ thing. So Aziraphale hid his disappointment and asked, as neutrally as he could, “won’t or can’t?”

“I just can’t let myself –“ Crowley said, voicing the self-directed frustration Aziraphale could not. “I know you believe it’s fine. You’re an angel; that’s what angels do. But I’m not like that, and even you can’t make something true just by believing in it.”

That was, in essence, how angelic miracles worked, but saying hat would most likely do nothing except derail the conversation, which was probably what Crowley had intended but would not get them anywhere in the grand scheme of things.

Aziraphale preemptively tightened his hold on Crowley’s shoulders. “What if I told you I didn’t believe it?”

Crowley yelped and made to stand, but Aziraphale’s grip held and he was forced to sink back into the chair, posture warring between indignant and aghast. “But you told me, angel, you promised –“

“I did,” Aziraphale agreed. “But I promised based on a rational conclusion I came to myself, after centuries of debate.”

Indignation won out. “Centuries? You’ve been planning this since – since what, Hamlet, and you never thought to enlighten me? I _agonized_ , angel.”

Aziraphale took a chance and let go, smoothing his hands down Crowley’s chest in a gesture not unlike soothing a nervous horse. Crowley held himself tense, but he didn’t bolt. Mission accomplished.

“Not _planning._ Just thinking. And I was never sure, until everything with Adam. I didn’t want to get your hopes up.”

“Still could have clued me in,” Crowley mumbled, but he shifted in his chair so Aziraphale was seated more comfortably. “Forgive me if I don’t trust your rose-tinted analysis of the situation.”

“As opposed to just tinted?” Aziraphale said archly. It wasn’t fair, he knw, and it wasn’t even accurate given that Crowley’s glasses lay discarded on the table beside them, but his patience was wearing thin. He was tired of being Good. “What are you afraid of, Crowley?”

Crowley wouldn’t look at him. “You know.”

“I don’t.”

“I just know… if you Fell, you’d be – different. And I wouldn’t stop – I’d still feel – the way I do. But you might –“

“I might not.”

This was not about sex. Aziraphale had been heedless, not to notice it earlier. No wonder Tempting hadn’t worked – Crowley was not afraid of Aziraphale’s desires; he was deathly, miserably terrified of his own. But he was not good at saying those kinds of things, and Aziraphale, in his single-minded quest to woo him, had forgotten to listen for them.

“Did you know that angels don’t feel love?” he asked, conversationally. It was a testament to the trust Crowley held that his face did not immediately fall, though his gaze did turn a shade warier. “Not the human kind of love, with the power to fix on one person, for better or worse. Before I met you, I hadn’t known anything beyond ethereal love.”

“And after you met me?” Crowley said quietly, but the hopeful quirk of his mouth and the way his hands crept back to rest on Aziraphale’s hips betrayed him.

Aziraphale grinned. This would work out. Feelings were his domain, and if honesty was all it took, well, Aziraphale was great at honesty. “Well, it took a while.”

Crowley pinched him.

“I have changed, over the years I’ve known you,” Aziraphale said slowly. It was strange to acknowledge it out loud, this truth that he had not been wholly Good for a very long time. Longer even, perhaps, than he had known it himself. “Often thanks to you. But in all that time – once I started loving you, that, and that alone, out of everything, has remained constant.”

Crowley’s eyes skittered from Aziraphale’s face, to Aziraphale’s hands on his chest, to his own hands on Aziraphale’s hips, and finally to the far wall, with its comfortable chairs and misfit bibles. Imperfect yet holy, just like Aziraphale. Perfect in their imperfections, just like Crowley. A matched set of worn, familiar chairs.

“You know I’m not always good at taking things on faith.”

Aziraphale was not a Good person. But he believed, and knew his belief to be true, that Goodness was not always as important as _goodness_. Being a _good_ person took effort, and a conscious decision to continue being good, even when you didn’t feel like it. Aziraphale did not always succeed at that. But it also meant understanding that others were trying just as hard as you were. It meant meeting them halfway.

Crowley had brought him flowers, and chocolates, and scotches, and a wilting philodendron. He had done his best to court Aziraphale in the way he believed Aziraphale ought to be courted. Aziraphale had responded, in turn, with the way he believed _Crowley_ wanted to be courted. But perhaps he and Crowley were not so different, after all. Perhaps they had adapted to each other, the way Aziraphale had adapted to Crowley’s chair choices.

“We’ll do it trial and error, then.”

Crowley smiled. “Very meticulous of you, angel.”

 _You go too fast for me,_ Aziraphale had said, once upon a time, when being Good still occupied the majority of his thoughts. Now, he would slow down for Crowley’s sake, because while he was not a Good person, he was good to the people he cared about. And he cared about Crowley.

He smiled. “You know me. Slow and steady.”

“I do, you know. Know you. And I know that you might think you’ve lost the things that make you Good, but when I look at you… it’s still there.”

And that was sweet; it really was. But Aziraphale had made his peace with himself a long time ago, and all that remained now was to show Crowley what that was.

“I don’t particularly care either way,” he said. And while Crowley stared, open-mouthed in surprise, Aziraphale kissed him again.


End file.
